object(stdClass)#30 (10) { ["id"]=> string(2) "20" ["blog_id"]=> string(2) "90" ["image1"]=> string(0) "" ["image1_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["image2_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["image2"]=> string(0) "" ["video1_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["video1"]=> string(0) "" ["video2_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["video2"]=> string(0) "" }

My first notebook relating to India starts on October 28, 1969, when I left Denmark by train. The overland route I followed went south to Germany and Austria, through the Iron Curtain to Yugoslavia and Bulgaria and into Turkey, across the snowy mountains in eastern Turkey to Iran and Afghanistan and, then, down to Pakistan before finally reaching India and Nepal.

The Burma Road being closed, some Western travellers went on to Thailand by air. However, most travellers from the West went no further than India and Nepal, which were my destinations, too.

Some travellers had their own means of transport; most relied on public transport. I was lucky to get a lift from Yugoslavia all the way to Herat with a fellow Dane, whose father was employed at Afghanistan’s Highway Maintenance Programme. At that time, both Iran and Afghanistan were ruled by relatively modernist monarchs.

In Iran, one had to endure statues of the Shah in each and every roundabout, but the major roads were in good condition except for a stretch between Gorgan and Bojnord on the road from Teheran to Mashhad. In Afghanistan, the freedom of movement was restricted, but the main road from Herat to Kabul via Kandahar was not too bad. The road down the Khyber Pass was as scenic as ever.

Travelling was uncomfortable, trucks and busses were often old, the drivers reckless and their use of “dipper at night” confounding at best. However, nowhere between Istanbul and Karachi had the Islamist threat crystallized sufficiently to scare off overland travellers. The route was open in both directions. Pakistanis were starting to move westwards to exploit new opportunities. Some travellers from Southeast Asia and Australia also found their way.

Borders were by no means easy to cross, but there was room for negotiation and manipulation. On a later trip, I remember having witnessed a small group of Sufi mendicants wanting to cross from Pakistan to India without valid documents. One of them was a Westerner.

I am not sure whether he was allowed to cross, but by dress and demeanour, he was as good a Sufi as the others in the group. If sincere Sufis heading for Ajmer were above the law, why should a seemingly pucca Western Sufi not be let through?

Similarly, I remember my Danish Hindi teacher, the comparative philologist Finn Thiesen, recalling that he once crossed by foot with a marriage party from India into Nepal without his passport. He was stopped by the Nepali police, who let him through admonishing him not to forget his passport next time.

At the other end of the trail, I witnessed a Pakistani trying to cross into Austria unable to produce the required minimum amount of cash. Surreptitiously, a more well-off Pakistani handed him some money to show the immigration officer. I must have given the Pakistani benefactor my address because he later wrote a letter to my parents in which he commended my understanding of Pakistani culture.

When I reached Pakistan, the military had ruled the country for a decade. I did not seek out people for political discussions, but I do remember a conversation with a young Burmah Shell employee in his office. I knew enough about Pakistan to ask him whether a state consisting of two wings on either side of India was sustainable.

He replied in the affirmative: There was no reason to doubt that the country would remain integrated. Politely and reasonably, he tried to explain the facts on the ground to a person, who could not be expected to be in the know of things. Perhaps, this was one of my first encounters with the educated middle class in Pakistan. He was articulate, but he was wrong.

A year later, the Awami League had won an electoral victory that the West Pakistani establishment – and probably most people in West Pakistan – could not stomach. After a short war, East Pakistan seceded.

Ramachandra Guha has noted that many Britishers wrongly foresaw the disintegration of the Indian republic. They were overly pessimistic. When I was in West Pakistan in late 1969, the prospect of national disintegration was not uppermost in people’s minds. That proved overly optimistic. Making an analytical mistake is not a British or a Pakistani monopoly. Who would have expected the communist Saur revolution in Afghanistan in April 1978, or the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979? Few at the time, I presume.

From Lahore, I travelled south to Karachi by train. There, I stayed for some time in the Makki Mosque on Garden Road. It housed other foreigners, including a few Black Americans. They had a missionary zeal and did their best to convince me to seek protection under Allah.

Submitting to Islam and becoming their “brother” would lead me to correct beliefs, a good heart, and proper use of the body resulting in peace of mind, and a life of pleasure and happiness.

Their philosophy was not so different from what Hinduism propounded, but there were differences. Islam offered only one chance. If you failed, you would go to Hell where the heat was five times worse than anything else, while in Hinduism, reincarnation offered many chances.

Like most Western travellers in those days, I was more inclined to Hinduism, Buddhism and the hippie way of life than to Islam. I was on my way to India – not on my way into Islam - and declined their offer.

Instead, I bought a passage at the Mackinnon and Mackenzie Company on McLeod Road.

This old steamship company still operated a regular ferry service, which took passengers to Bombay in style, or for as little as the cost of a “deck class” ticket. Thus, I reached India not by plane, nor by road, but by sea as used to be the custom.